A full-bodied brown ale with smooth hints of pumpkin and brown sugar. We brew our Punkin Ale with pumpkin meat, organic brown sugar and spices. As the season cools, this is the perfect beer to warm up with.

The pour into my Fuller's nonic raises a one finger creamy light tan head over a clear copper body. It looks thin. Lacing is sudsy but still somewhat substantial. The head falls slowly to a glass ring. The nose is all about the strong pumpkin pie spices: nutmeg, cinnamon, and allspice. The pumpkin scent also comes through strongly, and I can easily pick out the brown sugar, too. There's also a dry toasty aroma that doesn't jive well with the rest of the nose. The taste is fairly dry, and dominated first by bitter toastiness, with the spices and pumpkin flavor in the background. The artertaste is fairly clean, too. There's nothing stand-out about this here. The body is medium, with sharp carbonation. I feel that a smoother and sweeter beer would be much better than this dry mess.

I have to stop here. I love Dogfish Head. I love their beer. I've been down to their brewpub in Rehoboth, and it's a very long drive from my house. I admire and respect Sam to no end.

Okay. Appearance: poured a flat, almost still red-orange with no head. It really has nothing going for it in the appearance department. If I drink another of the 3 out of the 4-pack and it is carbonated, I'll come back and change this portion of the review. Also, before I get too far. A 4-pack? Really? That's...um...lousy. It's not WWS. It's not even 90 minute. Give me a whole damn 6 pack.

The smell is all spice, with a smidge of sqash/pumpkin, but mostly clove and cinnamon and... allspice, I guess. A slight alco-pop aroma of malt is somewhere in there too.

Taste is okay, really. I'm getting some cinnamon all over my mouth, and a little pumpkin essence, but mostly, it's essentially another pumpkin soda with some alcohol. Except of course for the complete lack of carbonation.

Mouthfeel. Yeah. Whatever that may be. I'm getting some cinnamon grittiness on top of a pile of "punkin". Maybe we've been punkd?

Oh god. I'm not going to drink another one of these. I will crack another one open to see if it's carbonated, but the rest are going to my mom who happens to like alcoholic pumpkin soda.

Taste- Nutmeg dominates after a little caramel tease. Pumpkin shows up in the aftertaste and in that context comes off more as underbaked unsweetened pumpkin than pumpkin pie. I happen to like nutmeg a lot but here I don't think it works,the choice of a German tasting yeast and a rather blunt wooden German type hops killed off the subtle sweet touch of the Nutmeg and amplified it's bitter side. I guess the idea was to merge pumpkin and malts,and merge the nutmeg and hops,but the whole never seemed at all in balance. I don't know if "cloying" can apply when there's hardly any sweetness but I had just 2/3 of the bottle and even so that last gulp was a bit forced

Mouthfeel- Body,texture,carbo,no problem.Aftertaste....unsweet pumpkin,some yeast that hit my belly like a brick,and a harsh underbuffered,overdone nutmeg blast accented by a hops that brought out the wrong things...just not for me.

Drinkability Low

I LOVE Pumpkin Pie. I hand grate a lot of nutmeg when I make egg nog....somehow DFH missed badly if I found it hard to handle.

My sister in law isn't generally a beer person,but I've been giving her small samples of beers. She's liked some big stouts and handled some hoppy IPA okay. She liked Saranac's sweet but uninspired Pumpkin Ale. This...was the first beer she handed back to me...could not finish a 3 oz sample.

Appearance- light golden amber with a thick lacing head.
Smell- Light Pumpkin with hazelnut and nutmeg.
Taste- Alcohol is the first thing tasted!? Followed up by a roasted hazelnut, blended with light pumpkin, nutmeg, and vanilla.
Mouthfeel- Alcohol burns at first, Flavors come through in the middle, and more alcohol in the end.

Overall- Not a good 1! I don't know many people who like Pumpkin Ale's, (I personally enjoy them) but this is a huge disappointment. Alcohol is too present and the pumpkin is too weak!
Give me a Post Road!!

Not a bad looking ale. Medium amber colored. Half-inch thick creamy head and a bit of lacing all the way down. Unfortunately, this was about the only good thing I could say about this beer.

Aromas of spice and alchohol. Not much pumpkin. Most of the other pumpkin ales I've tried have smelled better than this.

Taste was quite disappointing. Very bitter alcohol taste. Some spiciness. Reminds me of cheap malt-liquor. The more I sip this beer the less I like it.

The mouthfeel is simultaneously sticky and dry and watery.

Overall, I really didn't care for this beer. It is one of the worst pumpkin ales I've tried. Quite disappointing. I may pour it down the drain instead of fnishing it. I hope people who try this as their first pumpkin ale will not give up on the style. There are many other ones out there that IMO are much better--Cottonwood, Edenton, and Post Road all come to mind.

12 ounce bottle poured into a La Chouffe tulip. A frothy off white head builds through the narrow part of the tulip to an impressive height, but mostly disappears rather quickly. A little scattered lacing. Slight haze to the amber body.

Nose is somewhat reminiscent of the carmelized stuff on the edges of a pumpkin pie. Unfortunately, any real pumpkin flavor seems to be drowned out by a wave of the usual suspect pie spices. Enjoyable bready malts aplenty underneath it all, but there's a certain metallic quality to the spiciness that just doesn't mesh well with the malts. And again, actual pumpkin flavor is rather lacking.

Overall impression: Enough with the gimmicky pie spice beers. I hope to find a decent pumpkin offering this year (Weyerbacher and Smuttynose, here I come). In the meantime, I'll pass on this one unless I find it on tap with the brown sugar rim that is apparently all the rage.

Pours a mostly transparent copper color with a finger of off-white head that settles slowly. Active carbonation bubbles can be observed ascending within the glass. Aroma smells of pumpkin spices, a vague, caramel sweetness, and some pumpkin as well. The taste features prickly nutmeg, cinnamon, et al. on the front end, which is soon superseded by a nasty, watered-down, metallic juiciness. This is accompanied by a peculiar, chemical bitterness that is neither resinous, floral, peppery, or any other acceptable adjective one might normally attribute to hopping. The finish, which is unmercifully prolonged, features the taste of wheat followed by cloying cinnamon-water. Some alcoholic heat can be detected on the back end as well. The mouthfeel is slightly creamy but overcarbonated, which exaggerates the spices. I finally caught some pumpkin on the vapors that linger between sips. It could very well be there in the middle as well, but if it is, it's buried under so much garbage that it can't be appreciated.

I'm not normally this harsh, but I'm calling a spade a spade--this beer is totally unrefined and borderline amateurish. Don't know that I've ever found anything by Dogfish Head I enjoy, but even by that standard this is sub-par.

Im usually a fan of DFH beers and enjoy their beers that push the envelope, but this beer IMO was a train wreck.

Pours a medium brownish with some golden ruby highlights and a sort of khaki head. Smell is of spice and a bit of vegetable and pumpkin. The taste is pumpkiny up front and then just melds into a spicy malty mess followed by a drying hop finish that just jumps the train off the track. Drinkabilty was low as i was able to finish the beer, but wasnt going begging for another. Not one of the best pumpkin beers I had last year. Cottonwood was by far a more well rounded beer IMO.

Poured into a snifter, nice 1 inch head. Color is amber with a touch of red. Smells of Cinnamon and nutmeg, getting some sort of smell rotting vegitibles as well. Taste is mostly nutmeg with alltile cinnamon, i am getting no hints punkin flavor. Really this taste more like some winter warmers to me. Mouthfeel is slightly creamy but nothing to write home about. Though the flavors are not offensive this beer let me down and after i finish the rest of my pack i doubt i will buy this again let alone taste unless this is included at an event i attend. Not reccomended, so far the best i have had for the style is Punking.

Light, transluscent amber color with a light offwhite head. Smell was lightly metallic, mild pumpkin spice, and fucking alcohol. assholes. Taste was dry, very lightly flavored of standard pumpkin pie flavor, with noticeable alcohol present. Why the fuck make this 7% so you can taste the alcohol, and leave the base so weak, and mildly flavored? Christ. Not even as good as the Shipyard pumpkin beer which I hear is simply their summer beer with pumpkin spice added. This was a huge disappointment coming from DFH when they usually at least put out some creative, good beers. Very bland, dry and tastes, smells and looks like this was the recipe:

1 part water1 part light beer1 part vodkastingy dash of pumpkin pie spice.